AI Readiness Assessment

An AI readiness assessment answers a question most boards are quietly asking: are we actually in a position to do this, or are we about to spend money finding out that we are not? AI Applied runs a structured, fixed-fee assessment that gives you an evidence-based answer in weeks rather than a consulting programme that takes months to reach the same conclusion.

What the assessment covers

Data readiness

What data you hold, where it lives, how clean it is, who owns it, what you are lawfully permitted to do with it, and whether it can be accessed programmatically. This is the single most common blocker and the one most likely to be underestimated in internal estimates.

Technical readiness

Your architecture, integration options, cloud position, security posture, identity model and release process. We assess how hard it will genuinely be to deploy something into your environment and keep it running, including the procurement and change-control realities.

Process readiness

Which processes are documented, repeatable and high enough in volume to justify investment. We look for the combination of volume, consistency and measurable cost that makes an AI use case viable, and we quantify it rather than asserting it.

Governance readiness

Your current policies on data protection, model use, procurement, records management and risk. We identify what needs to exist before you deploy, particularly where decisions affect individuals or where sector regulation applies.

People and capability readiness

Who will own the system after go-live, what skills exist internally, where the change resistance sits, and whether there is a credible sponsor. Projects with no named owner do not survive contact with business as usual, regardless of technical quality.

What you receive

• A scored readiness profile across the five dimensions above, with the evidence behind each score.
• A prioritised long list of candidate use cases, each with an estimated effort, benefit range and risk rating.
• A recommended first project with a clear rationale for why it is first.
• A remediation list of the specific blockers that must be cleared, with owners and rough effort.
• An indicative roadmap and budget envelope for the following twelve months.
• A short board-ready summary you can circulate without translation.

How it runs

The assessment is deliberately light on your team time. It typically involves a kick-off session, six to ten focused interviews across business and technology, a review of documentation and sample data, a technical walkthrough of relevant systems, and a playback workshop. Elapsed time is normally three to four weeks depending on availability.

What makes ours different

Two things. First, we are a delivery studio rather than a pure advisory firm, so the recommendations are constrained by what we would actually be willing to build and support. Estimates come from having done the work, not from a benchmarking database. Second, the deliverable is designed to be useful even if you never engage us again. There is no dependency built into it and no deliberately vague next step that requires a follow-on contract to interpret.

When you should not bother

If you already know your first use case, have the data, have a sponsor and have a working relationship with a delivery partner, skip the assessment and go straight to a discovery for that use case. We will tell you that on a call rather than selling you an assessment you do not need. Similarly, if the honest state of your data means the answer is “not for eighteen months”, we would rather you heard that early.

Typical clients

We run readiness assessments for mid-sized UK organisations, professional services firms, public sector bodies and scale-ups: usually somewhere between fifty and two thousand staff, with an executive team that has decided AI matters but has not yet decided what to do about it. We work across the country and spend regular time on site with London clients.

Book an assessment

The assessment is fixed fee with a fixed scope and a fixed date for the playback. Book an introductory chat to check the fit, or send us the details of your situation. If you would rather see the delivery side first, look at our AI implementation services.

Explore our services

A full index of what we do is on the AI services page. The individual services are:

• AI readiness assessment
• AI implementation services
• Machine learning development
• Data engineering
• AI automation
• AI governance and compliance

Where we work

We deliver across the United Kingdom from our Glasgow studio, with on-site time included: London, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow.